how we became jot.

Naming our new magazine was hard work.

You would think it would be easy to come up with a short, snappy, memorable name that summed up this whole every day moment/paper crafting/instant memory keeping industry that is emerging since the advent of Project Life/pocket style scrapbooking. A name that captured the essence of what we are trying to do with this new publication — a name that was easy to remember, easy to spell, easy to google and easy to pronounce.

Nup.

I spent MORE time deciding on a name than I did deciding what content I wanted in Issue 1.

I had lists and lists and lists of names. I had a ton of possibilities.

I used my notes app on my phone to write in names as they came to me. I scribbled others in a notebook.

Some were ridiculous.

Others were maybes.

None were definites. We did keep coming back to Hello Life — but it felt too safe and not quirky and snappy enough.

The Support Team girls and I tossed names around with each other for days. We had a mega brain storming naming session online over a series of days.

The winning name was The Paper Pear. It didn’t feel *quite* right but I liked it. It was certainly quirky enough, had the word paper in it and it rolled off the tongue nicely. However, there was already a homewares business with the same name.

Back to the drawing board.

Then I THOUGHT I had found the perfect name. I was reading a party planning story and the word “confetti” jumped out of the page.

THAT WAS IT!

Confetti.

It was happy, fun, quirky and hinted at the magazine being a paper crafts one. I set about designing a logo and the Support Girls were excited (and probably rather relieved) that I had finally found a name. But my plans came to a crashing halt when I found out that there was a party planning magazine in the works using the same name already.

Back to the drawing board. Again.

Very sad.

I grieved for that name for a little while. I trusted that everything happens and evolves as it’s meant to and took the advice of the Support Girls who all assured me that when the right name came along, I would KNOW.

And they were right.

For some time, the magazine was called no name. I found it hard to continue working on Issue 1 when the poor publication didn’t even have a name but we marched on.

One day I typed myself a to do note in my phone about needing to “Jot down some marketing ideas..”